Abstract
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of vision loss. Treatment options remain limited for the most common form, dry AMD, which represents 80–90% of patients1. Progress toward therapeutic discovery has been hindered in part by the lack of physiologically relevant in vitro models replicating the multiple stress factors driving AMD progression, as well as the crosstalk between retinal cell types in response to these stresses. Here, we describe the development of a microphysiological multicellular co-culture model incorporating retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells, the primary cell type affected in AMD, co-cultured with either microglia, which play a central role in regulating retinal inflammation2, or photoreceptors, whose degeneration ultimately leads to vision loss. All cell types were derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
